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Longmuir and his coaching staff elevated the Dockers into a formidable flag fancy this year after entering as a potential top-four contender. <\/p>\n
Fremantle\u2019s 19 home-and-away wins were a club record, in a season where it at one point had won 14 consecutive games, and went unbeaten at its Optus Stadium fortress. <\/p>\n
It wasn\u2019t until the qualifying final against Hawthorn that the Dockers lost at home, but they powered to subsequent wins against Geelong and most recently Sydney to book the club\u2019s second-ever grand final berth. <\/p>\n
Longmuir polled 260 votes to beat out grand final rival and back-to-back Coach of the Year winner Chris Fagan (216 votes), with the veteran Lions mentor coming in second after leading his club to a fourth-straight grand final appearance. <\/p>\n
Sydney\u2019s Dean Cox came third (98 votes) in voting after a resurgent Swans campaign that saw the club finish the regular season in second spot on the ladder. <\/p>\n
But Longmuir, who is about to cap his seventh campaign in charge of the Dockers after also playing 139 games for the club between 1999 and 2007, was deservedly recognised on Tuesday night. <\/p>\n
Daicos claims historic first Brownlow | 02:20<\/p>\n
\u201cIt is a terrific honour \u2026 there are some great coaches and highly-respected coaches on that honour board, so to join them is very humbling,\u201d Longmuir told Fox Footy\u2019s AFL 360. <\/p>\n
\u201cThere\u2019s a lot of work that\u2019s gone into this year \u2026 it\u2019s taken a lot of people to get to this place. <\/p>\n
\u201cI don\u2019t really like talking about myself \u2014 I really do see this is as a coaching group award, rather than an individual award. <\/p>\n
\u201cI was very fortunate to work at two great clubs and get some great experiences at those clubs, which allowed me a good foundation for when I got this job. <\/p>\n
\u201cIt is a different beast being a senior coach \u2026 you do get spread a bit thin, and that\u2019s probably where I\u2019ve evolved \u2014 I\u2019ve been able to delegate a lot more to really trusted assistants, and backed them in a lot more. <\/p>\n
\u201cI also feel like I\u2019ve been greatly supported by the football club \u2026 in particular Joe Brierty, our GM, and Simon Garlick, our CEO. I\u2019ve always felt really great support from those two, and felt really aligned, which has helped my job immensely.\u201d<\/p>\n
This is the Dockers\u2019 third finals run with Longmuir at the wheel, after the 45-year-old built on a 16-win, elimination-final-exit effort last year. <\/p>\n
“Feel like a new kid at school!” | 03:03<\/p>\n
Meanwhile, Collingwood\u2019s Jordan Roughead has been recognised as the AFLCA Assistant Coach of the Year. <\/p>\n
Roughead was the Magpies\u2019 backs coach this year and helped consolidate the unit as one of the sturdiest in the competition. <\/p>\n
Elsewhere, Geelong\u2019s Nigel Lappin was awarded the Development Coach of the Year gong as the Cats\u2019 Head of Development. <\/p>\n
Revered in the space, Lappin was lured in August to the Tasmania Devils, where he\u2019ll start work under inaugural coach Ken Hinkley in November. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Fremantle coach Justin Longmuir has claimed the 2026 AFL Coaches Association Senior Coach of the Year award. It…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":901258,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[43,44,85,41,39,42,40],"class_list":["post-901257","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-headlines","tag-headlines","tag-news","tag-sports","tag-top-news","tag-top-stories","tag-topnews","tag-topstories"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/901257","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=901257"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/901257\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/901258"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=901257"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=901257"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=901257"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}